Tag: Discipleship
6 Ways to Show Love Today
By Natalie LaValley
Happy Valentine’s Day! Maybe you have an elaborate dinner date planned with your spouse, or maybe you’re single. Either way, here are a few ways to show love today that you that you might not have thought of before and that don’t require a significant other.
1. Send a Valentine to your single friend/family member.
When I was young, my brothers sent flowers to me and my sisters. I loved it! If you try something like this, make your Valentine about celebrating your friendship with that person. Don’t act like you’re “making up” for their being single!
2. Send flowers to a widow/widower.
You probably know several in your church. Being alone again after many years of marriage is hard. Let this person know that they’re still cared for and thought of. Again, focus on the person and your relationship with them, not on the absence of their spouse.
3. Write a letter.
Right now, flowers, chocolates, and balloons are everywhere. Go ahead and buy those chocolate-covered almonds for your significant other (never hurt anyone, right?), but consider also taking the time to write a letter telling that person what you love about them and what your relationship means to you. They’ll probably hang onto it forever. You can do this for a friend, too, of course!
4. Send your parents a card.
Did your parents give you chocolate for Valentine’s Day when you were a kid? Maybe you could return the favor with a card celebrating your parents’ love. Of course, many of us might have parents who divorced; if that’s the case, you can still thank your parent/s for the love they showed you. Whatever your family’s complications may be, only do what feels appropriate and don’t be guilted into anything that wouldn’t be genuine.
5. Respond to negativity with genuine care.
Around this time of year, you might see a lot of people posting sarcastic “Singles Awareness Day” memes or dealing with the heartbreak of a recent breakup or divorce. Don’t slap “Bible bandaids” on these people or send them Hallmark-sounding messages. Tell them something you genuinely love or respect about them. When you encourage someone with a specific affirmation about them, it shows that your comment was thoughtful and that you weren’t just telling them a generic message to make them feel better.
6. Give the gift of time.
This can be the hardest gift of all. It might not be possible today. Maybe you’re on a business trip right now, or your commute will take up half your evening. Either way, plan a time to just enjoy being with someone you love. Instead of planning activities, make that time about simply “hanging out.”.
Have a happy Valentine’s (and maybe hold onto some of these ideas for next year, too)!
Discipleship Perspectives featuring Rhonda Spriggs
As I’ve been blogging about discipleship, I began to wonder what other church leaders and staff had to say about it. What are common experiences, frustrations, and hopes? Here’s my interview with Tom Fuerst, the senior pastor at Bluff City Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Is the Church doing a good job of discipling congregations?
There are indicators that can be measured over generations which suggest we’re not doing a good job. If we’re just asking about programs, we are probably the most programmed people in the history of the world. But as each generation grows up, they don’t come back to church until they have children, and each generation comes back at a smaller percentage. This indicates that they don’t think the church has much to offer for their lives.”
What’s the biggest obstacle church leaders face?
On the staff end: We’re over-programmed. Additionally, leaders don’t want to do anything about discipleship even if they acknowledge that it’s weak. Our primary measurement is “butts in seats” because it looks like success.
On the congregation end: Things in church don’t matter. We have the greatest topic in the world to talk about, and we make it boring and undemanding. We try to keep people in church by entertaining them. But when people graduate and all they’ve been done is catered to, they discover that college groups can fulfill that better – the world entertains better. We’re not showing them how important this really is. We even have adults who have that assumption about the church.
Another major challenge is busyness. We don’t have healthy work/life balance to begin with. Then people have children, and they want their children involved in all the programs, to be busy. God would tell us not to do that with our lives. We don’t surrender our plans to Him, because He’d probably tell us to cut out half our activities.
You can see the problem reflected in the church attendance. Inconsistent attendance is the new norm because people are so busy.
If you look back in history, Ancient Israel understood worship service as a reordering of the world. The world is in chaos, and we reorder it by worshipping the Creator of order.
The final problem is laziness. If we’re honest, we don’t really think God matters, and we would rather watch football.
What do church leaders need?
The pull of American individualism and consumerism is so strong that I don’t know if we know what we need. And if we did, we wouldn’t want it. At the end of the day, our success needs to be measured by faithfulness to God – but the model held up by evangelicalism and conferences is that if you’re successful, you have lots of people. We’ve mixed capitalism into the way we measure church success by assuming that if you have a good church, you’ll have a big congregation. If the product you provide is meeting a genuine felt need, regardless of of the numbers, you will be successful. But what if, at the end of the day, God is not interested in being our product? I’m all for improving things and doing things with excellence – but what’s the motivation? I need the reminder that my identity is not the number of people listening to me. It’s hard.
To have genuine discipleship, we’ll have to dismantle capitalist, consumer, and celebrity Christianity. Just watch in a few years as a new celebrity pulls out a few verses and says this is how church is supposed to be!
We need greater appreciation for the story of the Bible. We don’t tell the story well; we either break it down into hyper-analyzed academic particles without the whole picture, or we think that people will be more drawn to our programs and entertainment than to the greatest story in the world.
Please feel free to comment and share constructive thoughts on these posts. I always love to hear more perspectives, so if you have your own thoughts on discipleship or topics you’d like to see covered in this blog, email me at natalie@ascendingleaders.org.
Discipleship Perspectives featuring Dr. Philip Tallon
As I’ve been blogging about discipleship, I began to wonder what other church leaders and staff had to say about it. What are common experiences, frustrations, and hopes? Here’s my interview with Tom Fuerst, the senior pastor at Bluff City Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Is the Church doing a good job of discipling congregations?
There are indicators that can be measured over generations which suggest we’re not doing a good job. If we’re just asking about programs, we are probably the most programmed people in the history of the world. But as each generation grows up, they don’t come back to church until they have children, and each generation comes back at a smaller percentage. This indicates that they don’t think the church has much to offer for their lives.”
What’s the biggest obstacle church leaders face?
On the staff end: We’re over-programmed. Additionally, leaders don’t want to do anything about discipleship even if they acknowledge that it’s weak. Our primary measurement is “butts in seats” because it looks like success.
On the congregation end: Things in church don’t matter. We have the greatest topic in the world to talk about, and we make it boring and undemanding. We try to keep people in church by entertaining them. But when people graduate and all they’ve been done is catered to, they discover that college groups can fulfill that better – the world entertains better. We’re not showing them how important this really is. We even have adults who have that assumption about the church.
Another major challenge is busyness. We don’t have healthy work/life balance to begin with. Then people have children, and they want their children involved in all the programs, to be busy. God would tell us not to do that with our lives. We don’t surrender our plans to Him, because He’d probably tell us to cut out half our activities.
You can see the problem reflected in the church attendance. Inconsistent attendance is the new norm because people are so busy.
If you look back in history, Ancient Israel understood worship service as a reordering of the world. The world is in chaos, and we reorder it by worshipping the Creator of order.
The final problem is laziness. If we’re honest, we don’t really think God matters, and we would rather watch football.
What do church leaders need?
The pull of American individualism and consumerism is so strong that I don’t know if we know what we need. And if we did, we wouldn’t want it. At the end of the day, our success needs to be measured by faithfulness to God – but the model held up by evangelicalism and conferences is that if you’re successful, you have lots of people. We’ve mixed capitalism into the way we measure church success by assuming that if you have a good church, you’ll have a big congregation. If the product you provide is meeting a genuine felt need, regardless of of the numbers, you will be successful. But what if, at the end of the day, God is not interested in being our product? I’m all for improving things and doing things with excellence – but what’s the motivation? I need the reminder that my identity is not the number of people listening to me. It’s hard.
To have genuine discipleship, we’ll have to dismantle capitalist, consumer, and celebrity Christianity. Just watch in a few years as a new celebrity pulls out a few verses and says this is how church is supposed to be!
We need greater appreciation for the story of the Bible. We don’t tell the story well; we either break it down into hyper-analyzed academic particles without the whole picture, or we think that people will be more drawn to our programs and entertainment than to the greatest story in the world.
Please feel free to comment and share constructive thoughts on these posts. I always love to hear more perspectives, so if you have your own thoughts on discipleship or topics you’d like to see covered in this blog, email me at natalie@ascendingleaders.org.
Discipleship Perspectives featuring Phil Morrow
As I’ve been blogging about discipleship, I began to wonder what other church leaders and staff had to say about it. What are common experiences, frustrations, and hopes? Here’s my interview with Tom Fuerst, the senior pastor at Bluff City Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Is the Church doing a good job of discipling congregations?
There are indicators that can be measured over generations which suggest we’re not doing a good job. If we’re just asking about programs, we are probably the most programmed people in the history of the world. But as each generation grows up, they don’t come back to church until they have children, and each generation comes back at a smaller percentage. This indicates that they don’t think the church has much to offer for their lives.”
What’s the biggest obstacle church leaders face?
On the staff end: We’re over-programmed. Additionally, leaders don’t want to do anything about discipleship even if they acknowledge that it’s weak. Our primary measurement is “butts in seats” because it looks like success.
On the congregation end: Things in church don’t matter. We have the greatest topic in the world to talk about, and we make it boring and undemanding. We try to keep people in church by entertaining them. But when people graduate and all they’ve been done is catered to, they discover that college groups can fulfill that better – the world entertains better. We’re not showing them how important this really is. We even have adults who have that assumption about the church.
Another major challenge is busyness. We don’t have healthy work/life balance to begin with. Then people have children, and they want their children involved in all the programs, to be busy. God would tell us not to do that with our lives. We don’t surrender our plans to Him, because He’d probably tell us to cut out half our activities.
You can see the problem reflected in the church attendance. Inconsistent attendance is the new norm because people are so busy.
If you look back in history, Ancient Israel understood worship service as a reordering of the world. The world is in chaos, and we reorder it by worshipping the Creator of order.
The final problem is laziness. If we’re honest, we don’t really think God matters, and we would rather watch football.
What do church leaders need?
The pull of American individualism and consumerism is so strong that I don’t know if we know what we need. And if we did, we wouldn’t want it. At the end of the day, our success needs to be measured by faithfulness to God – but the model held up by evangelicalism and conferences is that if you’re successful, you have lots of people. We’ve mixed capitalism into the way we measure church success by assuming that if you have a good church, you’ll have a big congregation. If the product you provide is meeting a genuine felt need, regardless of of the numbers, you will be successful. But what if, at the end of the day, God is not interested in being our product? I’m all for improving things and doing things with excellence – but what’s the motivation? I need the reminder that my identity is not the number of people listening to me. It’s hard.
To have genuine discipleship, we’ll have to dismantle capitalist, consumer, and celebrity Christianity. Just watch in a few years as a new celebrity pulls out a few verses and says this is how church is supposed to be!
We need greater appreciation for the story of the Bible. We don’t tell the story well; we either break it down into hyper-analyzed academic particles without the whole picture, or we think that people will be more drawn to our programs and entertainment than to the greatest story in the world.
Please feel free to comment and share constructive thoughts on these posts. I always love to hear more perspectives, so if you have your own thoughts on discipleship or topics you’d like to see covered in this blog, email me at natalie@ascendingleaders.org.
Discipleship Perspectives featuring Tom Fuerst
As I’ve been blogging about discipleship, I began to wonder what other church leaders and staff had to say about it. What are common experiences, frustrations, and hopes? Here’s my interview with Tom Fuerst, the senior pastor at Bluff City Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Is the Church doing a good job of discipling congregations?
There are indicators that can be measured over generations which suggest we’re not doing a good job. If we’re just asking about programs, we are probably the most programmed people in the history of the world. But as each generation grows up, they don’t come back to church until they have children, and each generation comes back at a smaller percentage. This indicates that they don’t think the church has much to offer for their lives.”
What’s the biggest obstacle church leaders face?
On the staff end: We’re over-programmed. Additionally, leaders don’t want to do anything about discipleship even if they acknowledge that it’s weak. Our primary measurement is “butts in seats” because it looks like success.
On the congregation end: Things in church don’t matter. We have the greatest topic in the world to talk about, and we make it boring and undemanding. We try to keep people in church by entertaining them. But when people graduate and all they’ve been done is catered to, they discover that college groups can fulfill that better – the world entertains better. We’re not showing them how important this really is. We even have adults who have that assumption about the church.
Another major challenge is busyness. We don’t have healthy work/life balance to begin with. Then people have children, and they want their children involved in all the programs, to be busy. God would tell us not to do that with our lives. We don’t surrender our plans to Him, because He’d probably tell us to cut out half our activities.
You can see the problem reflected in the church attendance. Inconsistent attendance is the new norm because people are so busy.
If you look back in history, Ancient Israel understood worship service as a reordering of the world. The world is in chaos, and we reorder it by worshipping the Creator of order.
The final problem is laziness. If we’re honest, we don’t really think God matters, and we would rather watch football.
What do church leaders need?
The pull of American individualism and consumerism is so strong that I don’t know if we know what we need. And if we did, we wouldn’t want it. At the end of the day, our success needs to be measured by faithfulness to God – but the model held up by evangelicalism and conferences is that if you’re successful, you have lots of people. We’ve mixed capitalism into the way we measure church success by assuming that if you have a good church, you’ll have a big congregation. If the product you provide is meeting a genuine felt need, regardless of of the numbers, you will be successful. But what if, at the end of the day, God is not interested in being our product? I’m all for improving things and doing things with excellence – but what’s the motivation? I need the reminder that my identity is not the number of people listening to me. It’s hard.
To have genuine discipleship, we’ll have to dismantle capitalist, consumer, and celebrity Christianity. Just watch in a few years as a new celebrity pulls out a few verses and says this is how church is supposed to be!
We need greater appreciation for the story of the Bible. We don’t tell the story well; we either break it down into hyper-analyzed academic particles without the whole picture, or we think that people will be more drawn to our programs and entertainment than to the greatest story in the world.
Please feel free to comment and share constructive thoughts on these posts. I always love to hear more perspectives, so if you have your own thoughts on discipleship or topics you’d like to see covered in this blog, email me at natalie@ascendingleaders.org.
Episode 0: What is Discipleship?
Our Guest for this Episode – Mike Johnson:
DisciplePaths – Behind the Scenes or Out in Front?
Coaching Question:
“In your experience, is it important that we name each of our discipleship studies (boulders, rocks, pebbles) by which stage it’s in for people in the congregation to see, or is that more for our discipleship staff and team in a ‘behind the scenes’ sense?'”
Mike’s Answer:
I suspect you and I agree on this statement–the best answer is the one that will clearly and simply encourage people into growth opportunities that will move more people at each of the four stages of a disciples’ growth forward in their love for Jesus.
Using stage names publicly will only help if the majority of the congregation understands discipleship by stages because of various means of communication over months and years and recognize the titles you have given to the stages.
If that is not yet the case, then do not confuse people by putting it out there. Rather, simply describe a growth experience by what may be true for them. For example, you could say ‘If you are trying to grow in Christ and sense you need to take one step forward in growing more intimate with Christ, this group may be just what you need.’ And take more steps over coming months to help people understand discipleship by stages and what it can mean for them.
If you want to be a part of this work, please consider making a donation today.
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What are we reading now? Lottie Moon edition.
In this edition of “What are we reading?”, Megan shares a quote from Lottie Moon.
Q: What’s the book?
A: The New Lottie Moon Story
Q: Why did you choose it?
A: I’m wanting to learn more about church history, from the early church to recent church history. I’ve never known Lottie’s story, and reading this book has deepened my admiration for this bold missionary woman. Her passion for the Great Commission was pure and raw. I want that.
